The burial pit contains straw and manure. (CBC)A dead whale that washed up on P.E.I. has been laid to rest in a unique burial place.
Environment officials have buried the remains of an eight-metre-long female minke whale in a huge compost pit.
"The thought process is to just see how they compost and what's left after the compost procedure," said wildlife biologist Chuck Gallison.
The burial pit is in a field in St. Andrews, approximately 25 kilometres northeast of Charlottetown. The pit contains straw and manure, and underground pipes will help a team control oxygen and temperature levels. The hope is that the whale flesh will melt away, and the bones will remain — clean and whole.
"There's a lot of bones that are really small," said crew member Glen Kelly. "We don't want to lose those, but we have them bagged up."
Kelly added, "If this works we'd like to use the hole again."
This particular whale was discovered dead Tuesday on a beach in Cavendish.
The P.E.I. government has buried up to 100 such whales of various species over the past 20 years.
This burial, however, marks the first time they've done so specifically with a view to one day retrieving the bones.
P.E.I. whale skeletons have attracted interest from museums in recent years. Ripley's Believe it Or Not has a sperm whale buried near Darnley and it hopes someday to dig it up. A blue whale was also removed from P.E.I. two years ago for display in British Columbia.
"I guess if I had my way, I'd love to see a natural history museum of Prince Edward Island of some kind, or a biodiversity centre, or something where we had skeletons of what we have on P.E.I.," Gallison said. "Not only whales, but all our other animals."
Three minke whales have washed up dead this year.
Two had become tangled in fishing gear. Investigators who examined this whale could not determine how it died.
